School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden.
Department of Social Work, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.
Sociol Health Illn. 2023 Sep;45(7):1483-1501. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.13643. Epub 2023 Apr 12.
'Experiential knowledge' has been identified as a key epistemic resource used by lay people to contest medical authorities and build new knowledge related to health. The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for such experience-based epistemic projects. This article contributes to understandings of the as yet under-theorised concept of experiential knowledge by analysing accounts of a group of Swedish women who claim that their use of contraceptive copper IUDs has led to systemic side effects not recognised by health care providers. Based on digital group interviews and written essays, we distinguish between three components or stages of experiential knowledge at work in the women's use of experience as an epistemic resource: somatic knowing, collective validation and self-experimentation. Drawing on a critical realist framework, we defend a notion of experiential knowledge as crucially, while only partially, based on a bodily and practical access to aspects of reality organised by extra-discursive principles. By providing theoretical complexity to the notion of experiential knowledge, we contribute resources for discriminating between and evaluating various experience-based claims, something that is particularly needed in the current 'post-truth' era where experience-based knowledge claims pointing in divergent directions flourish.
“经验知识”已被确定为外行人士用来质疑医学权威并构建与健康相关的新知识的关键认识资源。互联网为这种基于经验的认识项目创造了前所未有的机会。本文通过分析一群声称使用避孕铜宫内节育器（IUD）导致医疗保健提供者未识别的系统性副作用的瑞典女性的说法，为理解经验知识这一尚未得到充分理论化的概念做出了贡献。基于数字小组访谈和书面文章，我们区分了女性将经验作为认识资源的工作中的三种经验知识的组成部分或阶段：躯体感知、集体验证和自我试验。我们借鉴批判实在论框架，捍卫了一种经验知识的概念，即这种知识虽然部分地，但至关重要地，基于对由非话语原则组织的现实的身体和实践方面的访问。通过为经验知识的概念提供理论复杂性，我们为区分和评估各种基于经验的主张提供了资源，这在当前“后真相”时代尤为必要，在这个时代，指向不同方向的基于经验的知识主张蓬勃发展。
